Dear Boyfriend,

For a long time I forgot how to write. I used pen and paper to take note of other people’s words, I drew doodles, hearts and flowers, on the edges of my notebook, I inked letters but I did not write. Not like I used to. When I was young, before I fell in love for the first time, I wrote constantly. I wrote poems and stories. I tried to keep diaries and journals. Mostly, I wrote in a stream of consciousness; everything I thought came out on paper. I filled notebooks with my daydreams, my fears, my wants, my words.

Then I stopped.

I cannot recall if it was a conscious decision. I don’t think it was. I doubt it happened overnight either. I don’t remember when I stopped writing but I did. For years I was silent. In those years I dated my first boy and broke up with him. I lost my virginity. I experienced a dizzy, all-consuming love and the death of it. I graduated high school and went to college. I got drunk for the first time. I got arrested. I colored my hair, I cut it off, I let it grow, and I cut it again. I grew up and I changed and I didn’t write any of it down.

Until you.

The first thing I wrote, after all those years of silence, was a poem for you. I sat under a tree and, in the heat of the summer evening, I wrote down my love for you. Over the next months, I wrote more love poems for you. Then, one day, when the leaves were falling down, I wrote a story. It was a short story and they were just love poems slipped into notes but I was writing again. I was putting pen to paper and creating something and, to me, it was beautiful. I had lost my ability to write, I had lost my words.

Then I found them, in you.

Happy Anniversary.

I love you.